Amanda Thackeray at work in Wordsworth House gardenBen Gurr/Times Newspapers Ltd

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A child's shop window posterBen Gurr/Times Newspapers Ltd

Tom Whipple

Last updated at 12:01AM, November 13 2010

When the destruction came, it was strangely ordered. “The DVD shop spread
itself at the front,” Amanda Thackeray says — then, pointing into a small
walled garden, “and that was where the pet shop ended up”. Her finger sweeps
to the right: “The wool shop tangled itself all over the apple trees. We had
to unwind it by hand.”

Ms Thackeray is standing on the terrace of William Wordsworth House, in the
garden where, Cockermouth residents like to think, the Cumbrian poet saw his
first daffodils. Twelve months ago she had just finished the garden’s
seven-year restoration when, with a violence